Cross My Heart, Hope to Die, Stick a Needle in My Eye

Today I am posting the most important information that I have ever shared! I guarantee it will change your life. I am so sure about this one that I “Cross my heart, hope to die, stick a needle in my eye.”

It is for the greatest Chocolate Chip Cookies ever!

Now trust me when I say, that I have never met a Chocolate Chip Cookie I didn’t like. You just can’t go wrong when you mix brown sugar, butter and chocolate. Heck, I even burnt 2 batches of Chocolate Chip Cookies on my children’s first day back to school this year for their special treat and even those weren’t too bad.

However, I have been baking since I was a small child and have probably been making cookies for over 2 decades but all the Chocolate Chip cookies I have made always had some flaws. I’ve tried numerous different recipes. Some were too dry. Some were too moist. They were never good enough to give to anyone except my immediate family.

Here I am at age 7 with the first cake I ever made! I really thought I did a stroke with this one!!!

Admittedly, I am not a good baker. I make mistakes. I forget how many cups of flour I’ve put in. I don’t take the time to measure correctly. I throw everything in at the same time even when it says to beat separately. I probably should just stay out of the kitchen but nothing beats a cookie straight out of the oven. You just can’t buy that in a store!

In pursuit of having the perfect cookie I went on a crusade and did a lot of research this past year. I combined a couple of different recipes I found and I have finally reached my goal of making a Chocolate Chip cookie I felt confident in giving to people!

I believe the whole secret is mixing the baking soda in hot water. It must make some serious magic in these cookies and create a chewy center with a crisp outside. I also found that a lower oven temperature is key.

So go ahead and whip up some Chocolate Chip Cookies and spread some love. We gave last week’s batches to the crossing guards that the children use on their way to school and home. This week’s batches were given to my parents and to our mechanic!

The Greatest Chocolate Chip Cookies Ever!

The Greatest Chocolate Chip Cookies Ever

Ingredients

• 1 C. butter softened
• 1 C. sugar
• 1 C. brown sugar
• 2 eggs
• 2 tsp. vanilla
• 3 C. flour
• 1 tsp. baking soda
• 2 tsp. hot water
• ½ tsp. salt
• 2 C. chocolate chips

Directions

• Preheat oven to 325 degrees
• Cream together the butter, sugar and brown sugar until smooth.
• Beat in the eggs one at a time
• Stir in the vanilla
• Dissolve baking soda in 2 tsp. hot water and add to batter along with salt
• Stir in flour and chocolate chips
• Drop by large spoonfuls onto ungreased cookie sheet
• Bake for about 10 minutes

 

I Accept Your Challenge

It’s a long standing joke in my family that I’m not the best cook. It’s a joke that has been rightfully earned after a long series of mishaps. There was the time I showed up at a family gathering with a strawberry pie that was really just soup in a pie shell. I had misread the recipe. I still brought it to the party in hopes by some sort of miracle the pie would set up. A normal person would have just kept it at home and said they forgot it. There was also the time in my life when I thought baking powder and baking soda was interchangeable. It is not. This has produced many rock hard bakery goods that are not edible for human consumption. Even the birds will not touch them. I know because I’ve tried. Even with figuring out my logical mistakes, many things still do not turn out. This is due to my inability to stay on task and read a recipe the whole way through or skip the parts that I just don’t feel are that important.

Needless to say, my family got wise and began requesting jars of pickles or sliced cheese for me to bring to the family gatherings.

I am trying to be better though and miraculously, I’ve been having some success. I make homemade tortillas on a regular basis and a couple of weeks ago I made homemade cinnamon rolls. I told my mom and she couldn’t believe it. I’ve NEVER had any luck with yeast or dough so this was a major accomplishment.

Instead of just patting me on the back, my mom gave me a challenge. Apparently, telling my mom that I made ONE batch of cinnamon rolls that people were able to eat has now launched me on par with a master chef in her eyes.

She handed me a recipe. My jaw dropped when I read the title. It was for Elephant Tracks. I LOVED these as a kid. I requested my mom to make these all of the time. She made them occasionally. She said they were a really big pain in the butt to make. In fact, they must have been such a big thorn in her side that I don’t think I’ve had one since I was 10 years old.

I read the recipe and realized this was beyond my…. one batch of cinnamon roll capabilities… but a challenge is a challenge. I accepted.

I took the recipe home and set to work. The first mistake I made was inviting my kids to help me. My kids generally help me in the kitchen (mainly because I do need help) but this is not a recipe to have kids help with. You need every bit of brain power you have to maneuver your way through this recipe. You cannot be expected to remember whose turn it is to dump the flour in or break up the argument of which kid is better at cracking eggs.

After getting the dough made and shooing the kids out, I collected my thoughts and let the dough rest.

I returned to the kitchen to complete the final task of rolling out the dough and then rolling it up into a spiral…very similar to making cinnamon buns. However, this dough was too gooey and instead of doctoring it with more flour and letting it rest again, I plunged forward and just kind of smooshed it all together. I felt defeated at this point and was shaking my fist at my mom in my head.

I put my Elephant Tracks in the oven and expected I had just started heating up my next joke.

15 minutes later, the timer dinged and alerted me that the culinary gods were shining down on me. I don’t remember my mom’s Elephant Tracks looking like this, but they tasted every bit as good. Somehow, in the oven, my smooshed up dough turned into a crispy, soft, buttery sweet piece of pure delight!

Apparently, there’s just no way to mess up anything containing this much butter and sugar. Go ahead, I challenge you!

Elephant Tracks

Elephant Tracks

Ingredients

• ½ C. scalded milk
• 2 Tbsp. shortening
• ¼ C. sugar
• 1 tsp. salt
• 1 pkg. dry yeast dissolved in ¼ C. lukewarm water
• 2 beaten egg yolks or 1 whole egg
• 2 ½ C. flour
• 1 ¾ C. sugar
• 1 tsp. cinnamon
• ¼ C.  melted butter

Directions

• Combine scalded milk, shortening, sugar and salt. Cool to lukewarm.
• Dissolve yeast in the water. Add to first mixture.
• Stir in eggs
• Add flour all at once
• The dough should be very stiff and should be worked until smooth
• Turn dough out on floured board and let rest for 10 minutes
• Mix together the 1 ¾ C. sugar and 1 tsp. cinnamon
• Roll dough into rectangle
• Brush with melted butter and sprinkle with cinnamon/sugar mixture.
• Roll up and seal edges
• Cut slices 1 inch thick
• Working with one slice at a time, place both sides of slice into cinnamon/sugar mixture.
• Place on greased baking sheet and flatten with hand.
• Let rise for 30 minutes.
• Bake at 325 degrees for 15-18 minutes

Worm in the Dirt Cookies

My mother-in-law came this week for her yearly visit. Every time she comes I screw something up in the kitchen (my favorite was when I served raw rice. I forgot to turn on the stove but did remember to turn on the timer). This time was no exception. The other night I made dinner rolls for supper. They were not from scratch….merely Rhodes frozen dough balls that you put on a pan, cover in Saran Wrap, let rise for a few hours and then bake. I forgot to take the Saran Wrap off when I baked them so when I pulled them out of the oven they were all covered in a shiny, thick glaze of melted plastic. My mother-in-law was nice enough to help me pick off all the plastic and we served them alongside my homemade fried chicken… laughing! They actually weren’t too bad…just a few crunchy spots!

Needless to say, I require really easy to prepare foods. Nothing fancy for this girl!

The recipe I’m going to share with you today is so simple that my 7 year old daughter can now make them by herself. It’s an old recipe with one easy, cute twist. My mom always used to make these when I was little and they were one of my favorites. At Christmas time she would don them with a maraschino cherry.

Iris recently graduated to stove cooking and can make these cookies all by herself! Here she is making her own cookies for her 1st grade class birthday treat!

When I was trying to come up with a treat for my daughter to take for her Kindergarten class on her birthday I instantly thought of these cookies because they are easy to make, travel well and are yummy. The only problem is that they kind of look like a mound of dirt.

No problem!!! I simply put a gummy worm on top of the cookies and called them “Worm in the Dirt Cookies!” My daughter loved them and has requested them for everything since then!!

Iris selling Lemon Zucchini cupcakes and Worm in the Dirt Cookies at her yard bake sale last year! The neighbor kids kept coming back for more and more cookies! The cupcakes were bought out by our elderly neighbor ladies!

Worm in the Dirt Cookies

Ingredients

• 3 C. quick-cooking rolled oats
• 2/3 C. peanut butter
• 2 C. sugar
• ½ C. (1 stick) butter
• ½ C. milk
• 1/3 C. cocoa
• 2 tsp. vanilla

Directions

• Combine sugar, butter, milk and cocoa in medium saucepan. Cook over medium heat, stirring constantly, until mixture comes to a rolling boil.
• Remove from heat. Add oats, peanut butter and vanilla; stir quickly, mixing well.
• Immediately drop mixture by heaping teaspoons onto wax paper or tin foil.
• Add gummy worm to the top
• Let cool

Worm in the Dirt Cookies